Tag Archives: Who Buys Items in Freemium Games

The “freemium” style of games allows cell phone users such as unlocked Samsung Nexus S to download the base of the game for free, while being able to buy upgrades throughout its use. Interesting statistic is knowing and realizing who was able to spend the most money on these games. While you might think that it is children spending the most money on free games that is not exactly true. While people ages 13 to 17 years old plate 22% of the amount of time and again, only 5% of the revenues generated from this age group. 32% of game time is racked by by 18 to 24-year-olds, only spends 16% of the total revenue. The bulk of the revenue comes from people in the 25 to 34-year-old age range. They spent 29% of the total amount of time playing again, while racking up more than 49% of the total revenue. It shows that people in the 25 to 34 year old range have the money to spend on a game, but may not necessarily be the ones to play the most.

Another hotbed for revenues 35 to 54 age range. Play 14% of the total amount in these games, while spending a total of 28% of the overall revenue individuals 55 and older account for percent of the playtime and 2% of the overall revenue. This shows that people that are middle-aged, in this day and age, still play a fair amount of games, but are more likely to spend a large amount on it than other people.

The freemium games structure has risen to prominence on the PC as well as mobile phones such as unlocked Sony Ericsson XPERIA PLAY 3G. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see if this style of game development continues to be popular moving forward, or to see if it falls off like some of the previous styles of development.